


we'll hold each other soon ; in the blackest of rooms

by wekeepeachotherhuman



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mind Control, Past Rape/Non-con, Possession, Post-Season/Series 03, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 13:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16096673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekeepeachotherhuman/pseuds/wekeepeachotherhuman
Summary: They've found the monster that's taken over Eliot's body. Quentin plans to use an exorcism spell to get his friend back.





	we'll hold each other soon ; in the blackest of rooms

**Author's Note:**

> So, a few things to pretend before we jump right into this!
> 
> Can you tell I have zero confidence in my ability to writing anything mythology-related? So I'm skipping all of that entirely and letting my brain get right into the juicy emotional stuff!
> 
> Basically, at whatever point before this story begins, everyone has found one another and they've gotten their memories back. In my brain, they've all known who they are and that they're Magicians for a while now, but that timeline is entirely up to interpretation. 
> 
> I'm also pretending that the very end of the Season 3 finale didn't happen. The monster never actually found Quentin/Brian. He's just been out, doing his own thing. I also didn't think the child-like characterization of the monster worked very well in this, so I ignored that too. 
> 
> Also, magic!exorcism required a whole other story unto itself that, who knows, I may or may not write at some point. 
> 
> This is my first Magicians fic, so any terrible characterizations are 100% my bad!
> 
> As always, any kudos or comments are so greatly appreciated!

When Eliot’s eyes begin to flutter open, Quentin suddenly wonders if he’s made a mistake. Putting himself in this room alone with him. For a moment, the thing looks just like the Eliot Quentin remembers. 

The monster opens its eyes, takes in the room around them and then chuckles softly. He isn’t scared and that makes Quentin angry. 

“What are you laughing at?” Quentin asks. 

“This,” the monster says casually. It moves to gesture around the room and notices the god-touched rope tied around its wrists. Quentin relishes the momentary flash of uncertainty in its eyes. It hadn’t been expecting something so sophisticated. Quentin feels pride well up inside him when he thinks of Julia. Powerful beyond measure. Kind, but ruthless when it matters most. 

“I’m here to let you know that we have the spell that will exorcise you,” Quentin says.

The monster raises its eyebrows. Its smile seems forced. “Oh?”

“It’s a favour,” Quentin explains, maybe over-explains. “That I’m here at all.”

“A favour,” the monster parrots back. “Feels more like a stalling tactic.”

“Stalling for what?” Quentin asks. He sounds bitter and petulant. He’s sure the monster knows that it’s cracked right down to the truth. 

“You don’t have all the information,” the monster says. Quentin gets the distinct feeling that it’s thinking out loud. “What don’t you know?” it wonders. “Quentin Coldwater, you usually think so loudly, I don’t even have to try to guess what your plan is.”

“You can read minds?” Quentin asks. Going for unimpressed, but sounding nervous. 

“Not right now,” the monster allows. 

“That would be the wards,” Quentin explains. 

“Doesn’t matter,” the monster says, flitting its hand forward passively. It’s a gesture so reminiscent of Eliot, Quentin feels his stomach turn. “I figured it out anyway.”

“Oh yeah?” Quentin asks. “What don’t we know?”

“You need to know if Eliot is still alive in here,” it says, matter-of-factly. 

“He is,” Quentin says through gritted teeth. 

The monster shrugs. “Fine. He is. Then you need to know what state I’ll be leaving him in.” Quentin swallows hard. “Let me guess, you don’t have the most advanced first aid kit.”

“He’s alive,” Quentin says again. “And we’ll keep him that way.”

The monster pouts, taunting. “And then what?” It smiles and leans forward. “He’ll be alive and things will go back to the way they were.” When Quentin doesn’t answer; doesn’t give words to the hope they’ve all stored behind their rib cages, the monster keeps talking. “He won’t go back.”

“You don’t know him,” Quentin spits back. 

The monster smiles. Knows its right. Knows it doesn’t have to fight him on this. “You know. Possession is a…” The monster searches for the right word. Decides on: “Process. When he let me in, he was  _ so loud _ . It was just a constant stream of ‘Margo this, Quentin that’. It was  _ exhausting _ . So I buried him in puzzles.” Quentin swallows hard. That couldn’t have been as simple as its sounds. “Reality games that broke that loudness out of him.” Quentin thinks of the Eliot he knew at Brakebills. Self-proclaimed broken boy. And wonders how long he fought. And what it was that finally snapped him in two. “Sometimes I didn’t even have to make up a game to hurt him.” Quentin looks up at the monster then. The monster smiles a wicked smile. “Sometimes I just let him live in this body that wasn’t his anymore. I let him see what his body could do when he wasn’t in control. He’s a very good magician.” The monster sighs contentedly at a fond memory. “He knew the spell to snap a man’s neck better than I’d hoped he would.”

Quentin thinks of Mike McCormick. He thinks of wave of alcohol and drugs and the death wish that followed him. He feels a rage bubbling up inside of him. Killing Mike, that had been a defining moment in Eliot’s life. Something he would never forget or move on from, but something that he had learned to live with. Now, he would be back at square one.  Quentin folds his hand into a fist, releases and repeats. He tries to settle the thumping of his heart, but he doesn’t do it fast enough. The monster catches on. Knows it’s struck something important and vows to keep pushing. 

“You care about him,” the monster observes. “About Eliot.”

“Shut up.” His voice doesn’t pack nearly as much punch as he’d needed it to. 

“He cares about you too,” it says. “You know, in these games--these  _ lives _ \--I would make for him, he always looked for you.” Quentin’s eyes flash up to meet Eliot’s, hoping he’ll see anything but the monster there. “And there were an infinite number of lives I could have made him live, but they generally ended in one of two ways.” The monster pauses for effect, knowing it’s got Quentin rapt. “He’d either find you.” Quentin hates it, but he feels heart ache. He imagines Eliot endlessly looking for him. Feeling tethered to him for some reason. Always looking, so loving. “Or,” the monster starts. “He’d kill himself.” 

And Quentin feels the world crumble around him. This monster is playing with his emotions so easily. And it fucking  _ hurts _ . He’s only been in the same room with it for five minutes, he can’t even begin to fathom what it’s been doing to Eliot all this time. But he’s  _ still alive _ . Quentin holds onto that. The monster has already given away that much. Eliot’s alive and he’s  _ still fighting _ . 

_ He’s still fighting… _ A thought occurs to Quentin: if he’s fighting, what happens when he wins?

“Generally?” Quentin hears himself say. 

“What?”

“You said ‘generally’, they would end in one of two ways,” he continues. “What happened in the other lives?”

The monster sighs, a quick angry sigh. It sucks on the back of its teeth and cracks the vertebrae in its neck. Quentin’s struck a nerve. He can see that plain as day. And the answer why becomes obvious. 

“He’d figure out you were manipulating him,” Quentin says. He laughs. Proud of whatever piece of Eliot is sitting right in front of him. He thinks of Julia and Alice, stronger than they’ve ever been, fighting the monster from the outside. And he thinks of Eliot, fighting with everything he can from the inside. It’s exactly what they need for the spell to work. Eliot isn’t just alive, he’s on their side. And he’ll save himself if he has to. “He knows to fight back.”

The monster snarls. It starts forward slightly, pulling on its bonds. Its face in contorted in anger, like it’s the only emotion it can’t control. “Of course he knows to fight back,” it growls. “He’s been conditioned to  _ fight _ every day of his  _ pathetic life _ .” It says it as though it’s an insult, but Quentin isn’t sure he’s heard a truer statement about Eliot Waugh. 

“You’re angry,” Quentin says, knowing there’s nothing worse than someone pointing out your negative emotions. 

The monster tugs harshly on its bonds. “He tried to  _ hurt me _ ,” it snarls. The last two words come out in a voice that doesn’t belong to Eliot. “ _ At Blackspire _ .”

“He still is,” Quentin tells is. “You’re hurt because you chose wrong.” Quentin takes a step forward. Puffs his chest up. “You thought that he would be easy. That he was broken.”

“ _ He is  _ broken!”

“No,” Quentin says back. Quiet in his confidence, his voice commands the room. “He’s a high king,” he says. “And you’re royally fucked.”

The monster launches forward, hands outstretched, trying to grab for anything it can get its hands on. Quentin takes a step backward and lets the monster come at him with enough force that when it’s bonds go taut, they throw it off balance and it falls to its knees. It lowers its head down towards its chest. It shakes with anger. 

“No,” it mutters. “Don’t… Don’t, don’t, don’t…” Then it heaves a cough, braces itself on its hands against the concrete floor. Coughs, and then its disposition changes entirely. The room goes still and quiet. The monster keeps its head down. Its breath comes out in ragged sobs. 

“Quentin,” it says and Quentin’s blood runs cold. Before he can really think too much of it, he darts forward, puts his hands on who he knows has to be Eliot. He touches Eliot’s cheeks, lifts his head to look at him. He’s paler than he’d been. His eyes look more sunken. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth. 

“Eliot,” Quentin breathes out. He pulls Eliot against his chest, feels him grab at the front of his sweater. 

“Quentin, whatever you’re doing, you have to do it fast,” he says. His voice shakes with every word. He’s on the verge of hysterics, but knows he can’t lose this moment of clarity to emotion. 

“I know,” Quentin says into his hair. 

Eliot starts to cough and Quentin feels moisture at his collar. He pulls away, lifts Eliot off his chest and sees a blood stain on his shirt and on Eliot’s chin. He wipes at it, loses his vision of Eliot through the tears in his eyes. He smooths Eliot’s hair off his face, letting his thumb rub at Eliot’s temple. Eliot closes his eyes to the touch and fat tears roll down his cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“No,” Quentin tells him. “Don’t. We’re going to do this. We will. You just have to keep fighting.”

Eliot shakes his head. He looks dead on his feet. “I don’t want to.”

“I know,” Quentin says again. “Just…” 

Then Eliot’s face is coloured by fear and fear alone. He pulls away from Quentin and holds his hand out, keeping him at a safe distance. “You have to go,” he tells him. Quentin tries to grab Eliot’s hand, but he’s skittery. He pulls away and keeps trying to push Quentin further and further away. “It’s coming back. Q, you have to go!”

Quentin nods. He takes Eliot’s hands. He’s weak and Quentin can overpower him easily. He lowers them to give himself the space to do one thing he needs: he places a soft kiss to Eliot’s forehead. He can feel Eliot shaking like a leaf beneath him, but he relishes the touch, not having known how much he’d needed it too. 

“Go,” he says again, but he sounds more grateful than urgent. 

Quentin stands. He takes a few steps backward and watches the transformation in front of him as the monster reclaims what’s theirs. When he doesn’t recognize what’s behind Eliot’s eyes anymore, Quentin turns and makes for the door. 

As he closes it behind him, he can’t drown out the monster’s voice, which sounds just like Eliot, screaming his name. 

They’re living in one another’s pockets. As soon as Quentin steps out, he’s met with the pale faces of all of his friends. Listening to what sounds like Eliot beg for anyone to help him. Quentin closes his eyes to everything, to his friends, and to Eliot. 

“Q?” That’s Julia. She speaks gingerly. 

He hears heels clip against hardwood. They come closer. He shuts his eyes tighter. Then he feels a hand on his arm. A hand he knows doesn’t belong to Julia. He opens his eyes and Margo is looking up at him. Doe-eyed and crying. 

“What do we do?” she asks. Quietly, as though they’re the only people in the room. And it actually sort of feels that way. 

“We do the spell,” Quentin says. “Tonight.”

Margo nods. She swallows hard. Quentin hates to see her cry. 

“Damn,” Penny says from the couch. “He’s still in there?”

 

\--

 

The spell is complicated. Enough to niffin out if there weren’t six of them. 

But it  _ works _ . 

And Eliot’s left shivering with nothing left inside while Julia and Alice perform every healing spell they know. He’s mumbling:  _ Margo, Margo, Margo. _ Before he passes out and sleeps for hours. 

 

\--

 

The energy in the apartment has shifted. 

There’s light where there had only been darkness. Relief where tension had taken up. They’ve grown closer on this quest for something more important than keys, or magic. They’re all together, limbs hanging over one another on the large sectional in front of the television. 

Alice has already nodded off. Quentin doesn’t think he’ll be far behind her. 

Then, a door clicks shut somewhere behind them. 

They all turn towards the sound. They must all feel more tense than they’d realized because Eliot holds his hands up in surrender. “Jesus,” he says. “I just got war flashbacks to getting caught trying to sneak out of my bedroom for a party in high school.”

Margo is the only one to smile. To everyone else, it feels a little soon for jokes. It doesn’t help that Eliot is completely deadpan as he says it, and whatever hint of a smile there might be, certainly doesn’t reach his eyes. Julia and Quentin share a look. They’ve seen this sort of deflection in one another hundreds of times before. 

Julia stands. She plays with her hands, looks to Quentin and then back to Eliot. 

“Do you want something to eat?”

“Yeah, I was…” Eliot gestures towards the kitchen. Takes in the way that nobody’s eyes have left him yet. “Am I allowed to make it myself?”

“Yeah,” Julia says, stepping towards him. “Of course.”

As Julia passes him, she gives Quentin’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. 

Eliot doesn’t wait for her. He goes to the kitchen and lets her catch up. He scours through the cabinets for anything he might like. And Julia just lets him. She doesn’t want to leave him alone, but knows firsthand that being watched and coddled might be the worst thing for a person’s recovery. He begins to set out a plate and then pauses, turns towards her and raises his eyebrows. “Do you want some?”

“No,” Julia says simply. 

“Okay,” Eliot answers, rolling his eyes before returning to the task at hand. Feeling her eyes all over him, he stops again. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I’m fine.” When she doesn’t answer, Eliot looks at her. He’s unnerved by the expression on her face. She’s read him for a liar and it hadn’t even been that hard. “Okay, maybe ‘fine’ is a strong word. I’m… Breathing? Not a vegetable?”

“Eliot,” Julia says, cutting him off. 

“What?”

She takes a deep breath, looks out at everybody out on the couch. They’re all desperately trying to intimate that they aren’t listening in on the conversation. She leans back against the counter, crosses her arms over chest, and keeps her voice low. “I know I don’t know you very well, but when I was at my lowest, you came to me and gave me a reason to think about literally anything other than what happened to me.” Eliot looks away and shakes his head. “I want to return that favour.”

“Well, you’re doing a great job getting my mind off things,” he mutters back. 

“And if you ever wanna talk,” she says, ignoring him. “I know what it’s like to feel like your body doesn’t belong to you.”

Eliot freezes. There’s a moment where Julia wonders if he might just ignore her entirely. But then he softens and he looks at her out the corner of his eye. “I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

“You’re probably right,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “So when you find someone who’s also been possessed by a centuries-old demon-god that you can talk this all out with, let me know.” Eliot looks at her, eyes wide at her frankness and then he smiles. It’s infectious, so Julia finds herself smiling right back. 

“Jesus,” he says through a laugh. “Let Margo know you’re coming for her head in the ‘telling it like it is’ category.” He laughs, semi in disbelief of what she’s said, and semi in disbelief that he actually feels like he can laugh in the first place. 

“She knows,” Julia says, smiling. 

 

\--

 

Eliot joins them all on the couch. But it isn’t long before everyone starts dropping like flies. Shuffling towards whatever bed there might be some space in. 

Quentin is last to go. And only does so when Eliot tells him ‘to get off his dick and go to sleep’.

The next time Quentin opens his eyes, it’s still dark outside. The apartment is clouded in shadows. Next to him, Julia sleeps soundly. On her side, her hand tucked under her pillow. It’s a snapshot so vivid from his past, as a kid, having sleepovers, that he almost forgets where he is and everything that he’s been through. 

Outside their shared room, in the living space, Quentin can hear voices. A bluish-gray light bounces off the hardwood. The voices are coming from a screen. The apartment is otherwise dead silent. Each of his friends is dead to the world. Exhausted by adrenaline and relief jittering through their systems. All are dead to the world, except for one. 

So Quentin stands. He steps out into the living room. 

Eliot is alone, exactly where Quentin left him. Cross-legged, buried in blankets. He’s wearing glasses Quentin has never seen him wear before. 

Quentin takes a few steps towards the couch. If Eliot notices him coming closer, he sure as hell doesn’t acknowledge it. His eyes are glued to the laptop resting between his knees. The fan whirs desperately, trying to clear some heat out of its wiring. Eliot’s been using it a long time. Quentin hears the same audio loop once, then twice. It’s amateur sound. Guerilla-style, probably taken with a smartphone. So, not a movie. There is screaming, and then a sick snap of bone. The video loops again. 

Quentin comes to a stop at the arm of the couch. He peers over Eliot’s shoulder at the screen. Takes in what Eliot’s been taking in. 

Eliot’s watching himself. (The monster inside of him, rather.) He’s watching himself paralyze a man with magic. He’s watching himself hold that innocent man still, eyes darting around him, terrified. He’s listening to screaming New Yorkers, begging him to stop. He’s watching himself snap the neck of a man who didn’t even know that magic existed in the world. He’s watching that man crumble to the cold sidewalk. Immediately dead. 

The video loops again. 

“Eliot,” Quentin hears himself say. He’s reaching out for the laptop before Eliot even gives him a response. Eliot doesn’t fight back as Quentin shuts the computer and sets it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. “How long have you been watching that?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Q,” Eliot says. He hasn’t looked at Quentin yet. Quentin sits down on the couch. Leaves enough space between them to keep Eliot comfortable. “Besides,” he continues. He looks down at his hands in his laps, wrings them nervously. “Hiding it won’t change anything. It’s not like I don’t remember doing it, anyway.”

“Then why watch it?’ Quentin asks. 

“I’m a glutton for punishment, what can I say?” Eliot snaps back. 

So much of Eliot has come back. So much, but it feels  _ so different _ . Quentin’s drowning in how different it all seems. He doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know how to fix any of this. Or hell, even if its beyond fixing. In any other situation, he’d be relieved when Eliot started to speak again. Anything to get them out of his suffocating quietness, but what Eliot says chills him to the bone. 

“How many dead bodies do I have to leave behind before people start calling me a killer?”

“Eliot…” 

“One, you can get away with,” Eliot continues, as if Quentin hadn’t spoken at all. “Two? Could be shit luck. Bit suspicious,” he allows. “But three?”

“You’re not a killer,” Quentin says for him. 

“No?” Eliot asks. His voice is heavy and bitter. “How many people have you killed, Quentin?”

“That’s…” Quentin shakes his head. He can’t believe he lives in a world where that’s a valid question. “Eliot, there are 39 other timelines, that we know of…” Quentin watches Eliot roll his eyes. Whatever Quentin could say next, it won’t be good enough. “How am I supposed to…”

“In  _ this _ timeline,” Eliot clarifies for him. When Quentin doesn’t answer, Eliot sighs and continues for him. “It used my hands to do it, Quentin. My magic. I felt like I was fourteen again. Feeling telekinetic without knowing the word to describe it, never mind how to stop it from happening.” He takes a deep shuddering breath and it’s the closest thing to normal Quentin thinks he’s seen from him. “I could feel how wrong it was to use then, and I could feel that again now. How  _ wrong _ …” He shakes his head and it makes Quentin wonder how Eliot could ever use magic again. “But I let it happen anyway.”

Quentin feels himself shift closer to Eliot. “You didn’t  _ let _ anything happen.” He wants to reach out and touch him, but knows better. “These…” He doesn’t know what to call all the horrible things his friend has been through. Quentin stutters, knowing anything he says won’t even begin to describe the hell they’ve all been through and back. He settles on: “These  _ shitty things _ happened _ to you _ . It wasn’t your fault. Not now and not when you were a kid.”

Eliot smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He nods, but he isn’t buying what Quentin’s selling. He looks up at Q, finally meets his eye for what Quentin realizes is the first time. “The monster could hear you,” he says simply. “Whatever you thought, it could hear you. And it told me.”

“Whatever it told you…” Quentin starts, but he shuts his mouth when Eliot starts to talk over him.  _ Allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling _ ; that’s what Quentin had been told by a therapist here and there. So he allowed Eliot that same space now. 

“You’re telling me this isn’t my fault, but you didn’t always think that.” Quentin swallows hard and waits. Waits for whatever horrible thought the monster has manipulated and planted in Eliot as truth. “You blamed me for what happened at Blackspire. And if you blamed me for that, then naturally…” Eliot broke off suddenly. He looked around, clearly itching for a cigarette. “Naturally, you must have blamed me for everything that came after it.”

“That’s not true,” Quentin says. 

“You thought I shouldn’t have been there,” Eliot snaps, his voice venomous. “In the dungeon. You thought that if I hadn’t done what I did, none of this would have happened. That is the  _ definition _ of my fault.”

“No,” Quentin starts. 

“I appreciate what you’re trying to say, Quentin, but you don’t mean it.” Eliot looks back up at him. And he’s suddenly no longer angry. He looks resigned. Exhausted and small, buried in the comforts given to him by friends. 

So Quentin decides: there’s no point in lying. He  _ had _ thought that. He  _ had _ thought that things would have been better for everyone if Eliot hadn’t followed him to the dungeon. In his own anger and frustration, he’d allowed himself that dark moment to  _ find someone to blame _ . 

“Getting our memories back was hard,” Quentin explains. He sounds nervous, but he doesn’t trip over his words. “They came back and they brought a lot of shit with them. A lot of feelings that we all had to process and deal with. I  _ was _ angry. When I remembered how you’d changed my plan.” Eliot winces. He keeps his eyes locked on the woolen blanket on his lap. “I was,” Quentin continues. “Because… Because,  _ Jesus _ , El. I was  _ so close _ .” Eliot starts to chew on the inside of his cheek. Quentin doesn’t miss the way his jaw sets and the way his chin quivers, but these words are on his tongue now. They’re alive, and he _ needs _ to say them. He knows the bitterness in his chest well when it starts to rise. He can feel that emotion is going to start to try to choke him out. “I was so close to keep that monster away from everyone that I loved. To… To  _ restoring magic _ on our own terms. It would have worked…”

“You would have never been able to leave that dungeon,” Eliot answers. His own fear and anger and bitterness working him up as well. “You were close to  _ sacrificing yourself _ .”

“That’s what you do!” Quentin says, and he sounds like he’s back in high school, obsessed with Fillory and quests and  _ being a hero _ . “In these stories, that’s what people do.”

“Well, I wasn’t ready to accept that,” Eliot says, turning his eyes anywhere but on Quentin Coldwater. “None of us were,” he amends. “So if it hadn’t been me who shot the monster. If it hadn’t been me to let it in. It would have been any one of us.”

Quentin feels as though he’s gotten an answer to a question, but he isn’t sure that it’s the right one. Because there’s this ache in his chest that courses out through his veins, far-reaching, to his feet and fingertips that hasn’t gone away. He  _ knows _ Eliot is right. He knows anyone would have done anything to keep Quentin safe and bring him out of Blackspire with them. But he takes in the way that Eliot has drawn into himself. He takes in the knowledge that so much of their Eliot-- _ his Eliot _ \--can never come back from this, and he knows exactly what answer he needs to fill that hole he feels in his heart. To make that ache go away. 

“But why you, El?” Quentin asks. His voice finally does break. He’s been waiting on it for the last few minutes. Eliot turns to him. Behind his glasses, his eyes are already filled with tears. The question is charged;  _ why Eliot? Why my person? Why not anyone else? I could recover from anything but this… _ “Why did it have to be you?”

Eliot swallows hard. He turns his body towards Quentin. He looks suddenly more confident and sure of himself. As though he knows it’s his turn to take care of Quentin. And Quentin  _ hates _ that. He  _ hates _ that he’s asking this of Eliot. Now. He hates it, but he can’t stop. And Eliot just looks so sure that he can fix everything that Quentin just might let him try.

“Because you gave me a lifetime,” Eliot says. It’s simple and pure, but Quentin still feels something in his chest crack. He feels the world stop spinning. 

“Eliot…”

“No, listen,” Eliot interrupts. “You gave me a life once. A beautiful, long life. With a family I never thought I deserved. You gave me a purpose. A reason to keep going.” 

Quentin nods to himself. He thinks of the monster that had been wearing Eliot’s face. He thinks of what it told him about the reality puzzles it had given Eliot; how they often ended in one of two ways: Eliot dead, or having found Quentin and momentarily happy. If he could continue to give Eliot that reason, in this timeline, in  _ every _ timeline, he could feel as though this life he’d been given had served a purpose.

“I had to give that back to you,” Eliot says, stirring Quentin out of his thoughts. “In that life. In this life. In whatever god damn timeline that universe can throw at us.” Quentin nods again. He isn’t looking, but he feels Eliot shift a little closer this time. “I owe you a debt, Quentin. For simply existing, I owe you a debt.”

Quentin shakes his head. “You gave me all those things too.” Eliot looks away. Quentin hates the way he shakes his head minutely, like he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it. “Eliot Waugh,” he says, to get his attention, and he doesn’t continue, until Eliot looks back up at him. “What you owe, I owe too.” Eliot smiles, small and sad, but he doesn’t look away. He looks eager and desperate, like he needs to be given more. So Quentin gives him more. “And you know, you’re right,” he says. “I did give you a lifetime. So I’m not afraid to do it again. I don’t care what that thing made you think I felt. I’m not angry anymore, Eliot. And I don’t blame anyone but that monster for what’s happened to us.” Eliot nods, happy to hear it, and holds that close to his heart. “If it takes another one of my lifetimes to convince you of that, well…” Quentin smiles and he sees Eliot smile back. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to get used to seeing me every day.”

And then Eliot actually laughs. He hangs his chin down towards his chest and looks genuinely content. So when he starts to say: “I don’t…” Quentin cuts him off right there. 

“You  _ deserve that _ , El.”

Eliot smiles again. Smaller this time, but no less genuinely grateful. “What, you’re a psychic now too?”

Quentin smiles, shrugs easily. “You get old with somebody, you start to know how they think.” And Quentin suddenly finds himself emblazoned. In a way that he hasn’t felt since that day on the beach where he got to lay a crown on Eliot’s head. He feels compelled to praise because he isn’t sure there will be another time that Eliot will be so culpable to accepting it. “You’ve fought harder than I… I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through. But you fought and you beat it. And you’ll beat this--what you’re feeling--you’ll beat this too.” Quentin sits up a little straighter. He smiles, but means every word: “Because you are  _ royalty _ . You are  _ spectacular _ .” He sees Eliot sits up a little straighter too, and his heart swells. “You saw an impenetrable thing and thought: where do I break you? You saw its anger and knew that was where it would crack.”

Eliot smiles, clearly touched, but also ready to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Manipulating someone with their own anger is something I have experience with,” he says flippantly. “If my father wasn’t screaming at me, he wasn’t speaking to me. So.” He shrugs. “When you’re a kid, you do what you have to do.”

“Eliot,” Quentin says, breaking him off.

“Yeah?”

“Can I touch you?” he asks. 

Quentin watches Eliot weigh the pros and cons. He can see that Eliot wants nothing more than to be wrapped up in the arms of someone he loves, but there hasn’t been enough time. He hasn’t even had a chance to fully compartmentalize the fear and trauma of losing control over his body. But he doesn’t want to say no, so he settles on: “We’ll find out.”

Quentin nods. He reaches out for Eliot’s hand. Eliot lets it be held. Quentin waits for the moment that Eliot begins to relax into his touch before he shuffles closer, close enough to pull Eliot’s head down towards his chest. It’s laughable, really. Eliot’s got so much height on him that this position can’t be comfortable, but he melts into it. Like they’ve done this thousands of times before, because they have. He lets himself be held and it’s safest he’s felt since the mosaic. 


End file.
